Bill Bennett is the cabinet minister in charge of Premier Christy Clark’s core review of provincial government operations and services. He has his work cut out for him, say Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer.

While Premier Christy Clark has chosen to emphasize the red-tape-cutting aspect of her core review of government, the exercise is also central to her goals of cost containment and balanced budgets.

“The goal of the core review is simple: free up as many resources in government as possible to redeploy to our core objectives as government or provide flexibility to the minister of finance as he manages the provincial books,” Clark wrote this week in a letter of instruction to minister-in-charge-of-the-review Bill Bennett, setting out his mandate.

“This work is necessary in order to control government spending and ensure we are in the best financial position possible to deliver balanced budgets for the people of our province.”

No mention, alas, of a review into the resources that could be freed up by rolling back the recent increase in the pay scale for political staff. Perhaps the premier will include that possibility in a followup letter, ho, ho.

She did go on to encourage Bennett to do what she put at the forefront in talking to reporters Monday, namely that he “also consider regulatory reform and other de-regulation options that are presented.”

Bennett is expected to proceed with all deliberate speed: “Develop a core review and present to planning and priorities (the key cabinet committee) by Aug. 30. Provide core review updates to cabinet on a monthly basis. Complete the process by Dec. 31, 2014.”

Along the way, he’ll be backstopped by Finance Minister Mike de Jong, whose mandate letter from the premier compels him to “identify members of your ministry to form a team for (Minister Bennett) in his effort to identify resources that can be released for other priorities.”

Again, a strong sense that this review has more to do with constraining and/or redirecting government staff and funding, as opposed to simply eliminating regulatory barriers to investment and job creation.

Bennett, like de Jong, is part of a cabinet working group for the core review. Another member is Health Minister Terry Lake.

Here’s an excerpt from the premier’s letter setting out his Lake’s mandate. “Your job will be to live within the funding envelope provided by the minister of finance while at the same time continuing to innovate and improve patient services. “

He’s further directed to live within the ministry’s budgetary means in a coming around of contract negotiations, including with the medical profession on the fee schedule starting early next year.

Health accounts for about half of all program spending in government, and over the past 10 years, it has been absorbing increases of about six per cent a year. The Liberals are proposing to hold the increase to about three per cent in the current budget cycle. Lake needs to stay within that limit, or de Jong will be hard-pressed to achieve a balanced budget.

De Jong, for his part, is ordered to stay on track — “ensure balanced budget 2013 comes in balanced” — by, among other objectives, following through on the government asset sale program with its goal of $625 million in proceeds this year and next.

Once the books are balanced (the outcome won’t be certain until the public accounts are audited and published a year from now) de Jong is directed to get going on “achieving budget surpluses, 50 per cent of which can be applied to the provincial debt.”

Elsewhere in the premier’s mandate letters one finds other instructions that are likely to generate controversy in the weeks and months ahead.

Transportation Minister Todd Stone is directed to work with the TransLink mayor’s council to “develop improvements to the governance structure and identify funding options to provide additional resources to fund transit in the Lower Mainland.”

His hands are tied in one critical respect: “Any new funding source would need approval from voters through a referendum no later than the 2014 municipal election.”

Not likely would such a referendum pass.

Stone is also assigned to work with BC Ferries to “implement the service optimization and cost containment plan developed by the corporation and the ferry commissioner.” The Liberals put this one off until after the election. But as they are not inclined to increase the ferry subsidy (already approaching $200 million a year), service cuts would appear to be inevitable.

Another postponed controversy involves BC Hydro. The giant utility was supposed to begin laying out its needs and intentions via an integrated resource plan earlier this year. But the Liberals put off delivery of that plan until August.

Bennett, who was appointed minister of energy and mines at the same time as he was given charge of the core review, has now been directed to hold the line at the giant utility as well: “Minimize rate increases to consumers and industry at BC Hydro while continuing to replace and build hydroelectric and transmission infrastructure.”

Yet Hydro needs to manage soaring debt, rising costs and billions of dollars worth of spending in unresolved deferral accounts. Plus it is being pressured to deliver gobs of clean, cheap power for an expanded liquefied natural gas industry.

So Bennett has his work cut out for him there, as well as on the core review.

Nor does this exhaust the big challenges and pending controversies set out in the mandate letters. But that is a topic for another day.

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